Posted
by
kdawson
on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @01:52PM
from the means-what-it-says dept.

terber writes "A German court has once again upheld the GPLv2 and convicted Skype (based in Luxembourg) of violating the GPL by selling the Linux-based VoIP phone 'SMCWSKP 100' without proper source code access. (Original is in German, link is a Google translation.) Skype later added a flyer to the phones' packaging giving a URL where the sources could be obtained; but the court found this insufficient and in breach of GPL section 3. The plaintiff was once again Netfilter developer Harald Welte, who runs gpl-violations.org. The decision is available in German at www.ifross.de (Google translation here)."

Noone would be convicted of "breaching the GPL". The GPL is not an EULA. If you violate the terms of the GPL, you are (re)distributing without a license permitting you to do so (since the GPL, which you violated, is the only thing that gives you permission to do so), which is a copyright violation, not a GPL violation. I wish articles would get the specifics right.

You win today's "Pedant of the day award." Look for your certificate in the mail.

the case that also the program at the same place is offered for the Download: "If distribution OF executable or object code is larva by off ring ACCESS ton of CoPy from A designated place, then off ring equivalent ACCESS ton of CoPy the SOURCE code from the same place COUNTs as distribution OF the SOURCE code, even though third parties of acres emergency compelled tons of CoPy the SOURCE along with the object code." In all other cases of the software selling it is not sufficient to make the SOURCE code available only on-line one.

It's a wonder why Microsoft hates the GPL, Balmer is afraid of GRUB(s)